As trade chat started growing more and more full of special offers for boosts, I could not help remembering that at some point in late Legion there were speculations about Blizzard considering the option to implement an extra tab in LFG for boosts sales, which in exchange for an AH-like-cut would make them easy to publish/find while making the process totally scam-free.
So I am curious to hear about people’s opinions on this.
Would it feel like a despicable endorsement of P2W?
Or would it rather be a welcome solution to the issue of boost sales spam in Trade Chat?
On one hand, setting a dedicated space for boosts could improve the game experience for both those who are interested (safety in the trade) and not interested (no spam).
On the other, the moment it became available, and people are less afraid to be scammed, it is surely going to be used more and more… which could be good for guild groups looking into financing themselves for the next exp, and bad in terms of a feeling of P2W.
(Token for gold -> Buy gear and boost… although that is technically already possible anyway)
I despise what trade chat has become so my solution has just been to mute trade chat entirely. At first i tried blocking all the spam but that was just futile. I’m not sure about a separate tab for these people because i feel like the spam would still happen in trade chat regardless.
I have always thought that there should be a new tab in chat as well for trade boosts. I know it is trade and is therefore not breaking any rules, but it is annoying, so you either turn it off or use an add-on.
For me personally I would like to see a separate channel in game and your idea of lfg would also be nice, then the option is there for those that want it and those that don’t are not constantly annoyed with the spams. It seems like a nice compromise where all should be happy, I don’t understand why it hasn’t been implemented.
Any solution going towards a supported system will require extensive active and passive checks and verifications from Blizzard’s side. And I much rather have them handle the tickets over some boost-service policing.
Selling a boost for gold is a trade so sadly under the current rules all that ‘spam’ is permitted.
You can use addons to remove a good chunk of the spam, badboy addon and the plugin badboy ccleander can help. Leafkettle did a topic about the keywords to use to clean up trade chat:-
Although boosting might be considered a pay2win, i think is not. There are two main reasons why i think that:
boosting is helpful for for people with limited time. A player with limited playtime due to work, family and other reasons, you can’t do group content on a regular basis. For example to go for a raiding progress that means you, as a player must dedicate weekly certain hours to the game at a certain time. You need to do gear “pre-farm”, you need to farm potions and other things, etc. That requires a lot of time dedication, especially if you want to go for a mythic progress. So obviously, there players that don’t have that “time luxury” like others, so that means we punish them and deny their access just because of that?
The game allows it: take example a m+ dungeon, because is a smaller group. If the game allows that dungeon to be completed in 4 people instead of 5, that means that the 5th spot can be taken for boosting.
The same thinga what a player gets with boosting, another player can get if he has plenty of time. Back in Draenor, i had a lot of time to spare so i reached mythic Mannoroth progress. Now times have changed and my time is limited so i can’t join a guild and try progress. So boosting is the only solution to achieve what i want.
It would be nice if Blizz would create a dedicated “boost channel” . Also, another idea would be to to create a “boost tab” in AH, where major guild can put on sale their services and compete between them. These “boosting communities” (like Sylvanas and Galywix) kinda ruin all. They took monopol on the boosting market and there are guilds that could do boosting, but the players don’t want to waste hours to advertise (and their advertise to be dwarfed by these “boost communities spam”) so in the end they give up. What Blizz could do is to add a AH tab where guild post a boost for a certain time and date, people then sign-up and pay upfront the entire boost, then the guild is boosting the players and at the end they press a button where the boosted confirm that the boost was succesful and the gold is unlocked from AH to be given to the boosters. This way there can be avoided issues of scam where some players make lvl 1 chars, spam trade chat with boosting and ask upfront payment and then they dissappear. With this there will be competition in who is selling the most cheap the boost, guilds that don’t have time to advertise would have a chance to make extra gold and boosted players would have the choice to chose the cheapest price. It’s a win/win for everyone.
I tend to leave trade chat unless I personally need it. Most of the time it’s just meme spam or political bickering anyway, even without the advertisement spammers.
